The Birchbark House: Book Review

So I followed up my reading of Caddie Woodlawn (written in 1935 by Carol Ryrie Brink), which was set in 1864-1865 in western Wisconsin, with The Birchbark House, which was written by Louise Erdrich and published in 1999.

The Birchbark House is set in northern Wisconsin (on the shores of Lake Superior) in 1847, but like much of Caddie Woodlawn, a lot of the story is timeless. It is the story of a seven-year-old girl dealing with an annoying younger brother, a bossy older sister, and some quirky relatives. The character descriptions (along with the beautiful landscape descriptions and the fascinating portrayals of everyday life) really made the book something different and wonderful for me. And Old Tallow reminded me more than a little of Grandma Dowdel, one my favorite characters ever in a children's story.

I loved Erdrich's illustrations, too.

I would recommend this for kids of any age, except that there is a sudden, devastating death in the middle of the book. It is heartbreaking, and it isn't something that can just be skipped by not reading a couple of chapters, because much of the second half of the story deals with how Omakayas (the main character) comes to terms with her loss. This part is actually very beautiful and uplifting to read, and reminded me of one of my favorite books from college - Return to Laughter, by Elenore Smith Bowen, which also describes smallpox in a small community. But some younger or more sensitive kids may not be able to deal with this story as well as older children, so I'm going to say it is best for kids eleven and up.

Erdrich also has a beautiful children's book aimed at younger kids, and set in contemporary times, that older kids may like, too, called Grandmother's Pigeon. It is a nice follow-up to The Birchbark House, because it shows that Native Americans don't just exist in the misty past along the shores of Lake Superior.

Tags: book+reviews, Birchbark+House, Erdrich, children's+literature

Caddie Woodlawn

The real Caroline Augusta Woodhouse,
from The Wisconsin Historical Society's site on Caddie Woodlawn

So I just posted a rather lengthy review on this 1936 Newbery winner here, over at The Newbery Project.

One of the parts that I didn't write about there (because you know, I've already gone on and on past many people's attention spans) was how Caddie and her brothers take this generic Indian item (a "scalp belt", which I have no idea if even existed among any Native peoples in Wisconsin) and re-name it and make a sideshow out it. It's a nice metaphor for the co-option of Indian culture by American society in general.

As an archaeologist working in the U.S., of course, I was accused of this and much worse. It's not so black and white (and red), though, and it's another point that could be discussed when kids read Caddie Woodlawn. How much have we progressed since its publication in 1935? Are media portrayals of Indians any better today, or are people just being politically correct and thinking the same old thing that their grandparents thought?

Tags: book+reviews, Caddie+Woodlawn, racism

A Dog Post

There's an interesting post on AAIO on the dog park for Ann Arbor debate. With one cranky exception, even the people who don't particularly like dogs see the importance of having such a park. I don't think I've ever seen such agreement amongst the commentators there - on a positive issue, anyway, there have been plenty of snarky posts where everyone is happy to join in abuse. As far as I can tell from reading a recent newspaper article and the posts at ArborDog, the reasons that there aren't a public dog park in Ann Arbor already are:

- NIMBY issues (dog parks are ugly and/or dirty, increase traffic, people are just going to let their dogs run off-leash in parks anyway so why bother, and dog parks are dangerous, and won't someone think of the children?)

- painfully slow city bureaucracy - with funds available for fences at some parks but not others

The increased traffic and parking might be an issue if people actually do travel to use the dog park (negating the next objection). I don't really think that people who come to use a dog park are going to let their dogs run off-leash outside the park - they're already traveling a bit just to use an area where their dogs can be off-leash safely, so what's the point of letting them loose just outside the dog park? From what I've seen at other dog parks, the dog owners that use dog parks are generally more responsible than your average dog owner. They understand that dogs need exercise and socialization, and they often have taken their dogs to obedience classes. Bad dog owners can't let their dogs off the leash even in a dog park, because the dog doesn't understand "come", and their dogs won't drop the ball when they retrieve so why bother to throw anything, and they just don't have time to do more than let the dog out in the backyard a couple of times a day anyway.

I don't think that dog parks are any more unsightly than baseball fields, soccer fields, or playgrounds, and we certainly have plenty of those around. They need a lot less maintenance than any of those park facilities, too. Basically, all a dog park needs is fencing (and not really expensive fencing, either), parking (already available at many of the parks), and a garbage can. Shade is nice, but not necessary.

And I don't think dog parks are dangerous, either. You could certainly argue that happy, exhausted, and well-socialized dogs are safer to be around that neurotic, hyperactive dogs, and that dog owners are less likely to let their dogs off-leash in other parks if they have somewhere that they can do it legally. The dog park in Saline (see below) co-exists with both a children's playground and some natural areas, and during many hours spent with my kids on the playground, we've never had any problems with dogs. And the few times that I've been in the dog park, we didn't have any problems with children.

I don't understand the difficulty in putting a fence up at an existing park. The City of Ann Arbor Parks & Recreation department owns 147 parks, and they can't find one area with an acre to spare? I'm still mad at them for taking down a perfectly good chain-link fence at Scheffler Park, and replacing it with a rustic split-rail wooden fence. The chain-link fence made the park playground safe for little kids, which I assume is part of the point of having a playground. It must have cost a bit to pull out that fence and replace it with the new fence - which had the great advantage of being easy to mow under, even if it didn't keep toddlers from ducking under the rails and out onto Platt. I know that quite a few letters and e-mails to the Parks department were shrugged off, so maybe it shouldn't surprise me that dog owners are getting the shaft now.

Anyway, we're lucky to live near two dog parks now - one run by the city of Saline Parks & Recreation department, in Mill Pond park (in the back of the park, on the Saline river), and one at the corner of Textile and Pleasant Lake Rd. (kitty corner from the Washtenaw Farm Council grounds), part of the Copper Leaf Crossing vet's office/pet supply store.

Sadly, my dog is now too old to benefit from a dog park - at well over 14, she doesn't want to wrestle or chase rambunctious younger dogs any more, and she just doesn't need so much exercise. I remember spending hours throwing a tennis ball or a frisbee in Leslie Park when she was young, calling her quickly and putting the leash on her anytime a car entered the park or when a kid came wandering over from Arrowwood. We not only picked up our dog's poop, but offered bags to other dog owners who seemed like they were going to ignore their dog's waste, and often picked up other's people's dog poop and the occasional diaper thrown into the parking lot. My retriever mix also excelled in collecting plastic bottles, which we turned in for the deposit or recycled. We were responsible scofflaws who didn't hurt anyone.

Zoe still acts like a puppy when we put the sprinkler out, though, even in her old age. Here she is last Sunday, the hottest day of the year, when she was running through the water with my kids.

Selling Out

As you may have noticed, I'm giving Google's AdSense a try. We'll see how it works out, but with paid employment not being plentiful here right now (hey! Michigan's first in the US in unemployment!), and since AdSense is based in Ann Arbor - well, we'll see. I'm only willing to sell out so much.

It may make me blog more, which would be a good thing, as I've been lazy now that summer's here. Now excuse me while I go pick strawberries from our yard and put them on ice cream, with a little whipped cream and dark chocolate, and sit out on the deck and watch the corn grow and my kids catch butterflies and baby grasshoppers.

Missing May and The Higher Power of Lucky

Check out my review of Cynthia Rylant's novel about the loss of a parent over at The Newbery Project: Missing May. It's a beautiful book, but I think it is better suited for older kids - at least around age 12. The Higher Power of Lucky (this year's Newbery winner - Missing May won the award in 1993) is also about loss and a search for meaning, but it is much lighter in tone and the grief is a little more distant. It was fine for my ten year old, whom I now like to call "ma puce".

Fair Weather and The Devil in the White City: Book Review

My book club read The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Eric Larson this month - a re-read for me, although I confess I only skimmed most of the parts about Daniel Burnham the second time around. Since I grew up in Chicago's hinterland, I'm interested in history, and my grandmother had a little souvenir glass with the script "World's Fair 1893" on it, it was not hard to find at least some of this book fascinating. Other parts of Larson's book included a bit too much name dropping, heavy-handed foreshadowing, or were too gruesome for some of us.

Over a pitcher of sangria, my book club agreed that Larson really should have included some good maps in the book. Luckily, much of this information is available online, at sites like the University of Chicago's The Columbian Exposition, or the Chicago Historical Society's site. And this is a good place to also recommend one of my favorite books ever on Chicago: Nature's Metropolis, by William Cronon - though my brother says it has too many footnotes, I liked every one of them.

Anyway, I had recently read (and was blown away by) Richard Peck's A Year Down Yonder as part of a group blog about the Newbery award winners, so that when I saw that Peck had a children's book that took place during the World's Fair, I decided to check this one out, too.

Fair Weather was a wonderful book. In fact, I thought that it provided a more compelling description of the fair and its historical importance than The Devil in the White City, at least partially because Peck didn't try to include such a mass of facts in there. And it's not like I prefer easier (or children's) books more - Nature's Metropolis (see above), although one of the best-written works of environmental history that I've ever read, still isn't really an "easy read."

One of the things that surprised me when I re-read The Devil in the White City was how little I had retained after three years. On the other hand, I don't think that I will have any trouble remembering several of the scenes from Fair Weather for many years - partially because of the beauty of the writing.

I know that it's not really fair (no pun intended!) to compare a piece of historical fiction aimed at 8 to 12-year-olds to a New York Times non-fiction bestseller - but Larson's work is so well-known and (deservedly) widely appreciated, I can't help but put in a plug in for Peck's gentler work. Frankly, I've been surprised at how very much I have been enjoying all of the children's books that I've been reading for The Newbery Project.

Although there is no mention of H.H. Holmes (aka Herman Mudgett) in Fair Weather, the book does acknowledge the darker side of Chicago - in an age-appropriate manner:

We had us a good supper at the Old Vienna, though Granddad warned us not to order the bratwurst.

"Chicago's a meat-packin' town," he explained, "and once in a while a workin' man will fall into the grinder and come out as links of prime smoked sausage."

Lottie swallowed hard.

But we made a hearty meal out of sauerbraten, sour potato salad, and vinegared cucumbers. Over our heads the terrible wheel creaked. Across the Midway dancing girls writhed like serpents. (p. 68)

Peck's five page "Note from the Author", titled After the Fair, concludes the book with the most interesting and succinct summation of the fair that I've read (and that includes Devil in the White City and many scholarly and popular articles and essays). Even if you don't have the excuse of having kids that are the right age for Fair Weather, I definitely recommend it.

Here's an excerpt from the end that illustrates Peck's writing, and some of the enduring fascination that Larson and so many others see in the fair:

As we turned up into the sky, you didn't notice the straining and the clanking of that terrible wheel anymore. The great exposition began to fan out below us and all the pavilions were like frosted wedding cakes. It was the White City on blue lagoons against the endless lake. Golden statues caught the last of the setting sun. Then like sudden morning the electric lights came on. If I could show you anything, I would show you that. The searchlight turned, and everything was washed in light like there could never be darkness again. (p. 131-2)

Tags: book+review, Chicago, children's+literature,Richard+Peck, Eric+Larson, World's+Fair,1893, Fair+Weather, Devil+White+City

Nine Parts of Desire: Book Review

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, by Geraldine Brooks, is a book that I wish I'd read a couple of years ago.

My book club (and I) read March - Brooks' 2006 Pulitzer prize-winning novel - this year, and I really enjoyed it (despite the fact that I never liked Little Women all that much), but I thought that Nine Parts of Desire was every bit as good as March. Though as non-fiction, it is obviously a completely different animal. If you ask me (and it's my blog, so in a way you are asking me), Brooks is pretty damn talented, doing both of these things so very well.

The title is from a famous quote by Muhammad's son-in-law (founder of Shiite sect):

Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.

Part of the reason that I liked Nine Parts of Desire so much is because of the way that it complements all of the other books I've read about the Middle East over the last few years. Books that it seems that every second person in the US is reading right now. Books like Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Bookseller of Kabul, Kabul Beauty School, The Kite Runner, and (as soon as I move to the top of the library reserve list) A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Brooks' book gave me a much broader perspective on women in the Middle East, and a lot of history that helped make women's roles in the other books more understandable. As much as I enjoyed the other works (except for several parts of Kabul Beauty School, where I repeatedly wanted to ask the author wtf she was thinking), each of those books presents a glimpse of women's lives, while Nine Parts of Desire provides the range and depth that put the other books in context - both in terms of time, and culturally and geographically.

Although it's non-fiction, Nine Parts is quick, easy read. Since all of the chapters are short pieces on the women that Brooks met in the different countries where she worked as a journalist - including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and Jordan - it is easy to pick the book up and then set it down frequently, as may be needed if you are trying to read while dealing with children or a job or any other pesky book distractions.

Brooks examines how these women feel about a bunch of different topics (with some skillfully placed interviews and anecdotes), such as dress (especially different forms of veils), marriage, sexuality, children, revolution, sports, and education in the different chapters. For example:

Like most Saudi homes, theirs had two entrances - one for men, one for women. I arrived at the high-walled villa one night for a party. White-robed men moved to the front door. Their wives, black-veiled and clutching colorfully dressed toddlers, made their way to an entrance at the side.

Each door opened on a large, sofa-lined salon, the women's decorated in floral pink cottons and plush carpet; the men's a more austere and formal room. The two groups didn't mingle. But there was one male guest the hosts particularly wanted me to meet....When I returned to the women's salon, the man's wife winked at me. "You just did me a great favor," she said. "My husband loves to talk politics. And talking politics to a woman is sure to have made him aroused. Now I can't wait to get him home. I know I'll have great sex with him tonight." I blushed. The woman laughed. "You Westerners are so shy about sex," she said. "Here, we talk about it all the time." (p. 40)

There is a useful glossary and a comprehensive index, in case you want to know the difference between a burka, hijab, and chador, or find the spot about Queen Noor's courtship. Furthermore, reading Nine Parts of Desire should go a ways towards stopping its readers from making sweeping generalizations about Muslim women.

The only serious drawback that I found is that Nine Parts of Desire was published in 1994 and obviously written a year or so earlier. It is interesting and rather depressing to see how well Brooks predicted current fundamentalism and strife in the Middle East. But it is also more than a little frustrating, because at the end of the book, you really want an update that covers the last 13 years. So Ms. Brooks, if you read this - how about a new edition? I'd say the time is definitely right for it.

Tags: Geraldine+Brooks, women, Islamic, Muslim, Middle+East, history, Nine+Parts+Desire

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Her Mixed-Up Covers

I just blogged about the 1968 Newbery winner, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg, over at The Newbery Project. It's a book that I actually remember reading as a child, and it was still great some thirty-plus years later. My copy (a 1977 edition, recently picked up for a quarter at the Saline District Library's monthly used book sales), had this cover:

Not terrible. The image of the kids in their pajamas hiding in the museum gives you the gist of the story.

But when I looked around for cover images, I saw the cover that I remembered from my childhood:


This cover has original artwork by the author on it - which fits well with all the wonderful illustrations in the book (until my recent re-read, I didn't realize that E.L. Konigsburg did the illustrations as well as the story. Damn, she's talented). It also doesn't have that plasticky seventies look to it, which I first noticed with the creepy mannequin-like people in the cover for Tales from Silver Lands.

Now why did the publishers go and change a perfectly good, classic cover? Did they think that one on top was better because it was more colorful? I was happy to see that the most recent edition retains more of the flavor of the original. Although I like the title font and placement better, I'm not sure that the image is really a great improvement, though:


I'm going to have to buy this edition, though, because my 70's paperback is crappy acidic paper that probably won't last the few more years until my daughter's old enough to read it, and I have to see the 2002 afterword from Mrs. E.L. Konigsburg.
It really is a great story.

Tags: Konigsburg, Mixed+Up+Files, book+reviews, book+covers

On My Nightstand and the Floor and the Coffee Table

...are all the books I'm currently reading. I haven't done an "On My Nightstand" post (modeled on these by Mental Multivitamin) for a long time. Today I'm just blogging about why I'm reading it (do you also find yourself using "blog" as a verb in your daily life? Scary, isn't it?), and then turning to a random page and taking a quote from the book.

___________

The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo. This is part of a very enjoyable group read and blog about the Newbery medal winners from 1924 to today (see my review of The Tale here). It's been wonderful re-discovering children's literature with my kids, and The Tale of Despereaux is something that shouldn't be missed by adults who love fairy tales.

"Reader, do you recall the word "perfidy"? As our story progresses, "perfidy" becomes an ever more appropriate word, doesn't it?" (p. 69)

___________

The Last Chinese Chef, by Nicole Mones - I haven't started this one yet, but it's by the author of Lost in Translation, and it's about food. And it has an absolutely gorgeous cover. How bad could it be?

"This past year his topic had been a single phrase: xia guanzi, to eat out, to go down to a restaurant. In an elegant sixty-minute loop he conjured all of xia guanzi's meanings over the last eighty years. At first it meant something positive and exciting - pleasure and company, good food." (p. 85)

___________

The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? by Leslie Bennetts. This is a book that's been in the news a lot lately, and a topic of much discussion in my Mothers & More group, a national advocacy and support group for mothers.

"To many observers, the most heartbreaking thing is that they're choosing such vulnerability voluntarily. "Women's impoverishment is nothing new, but in the past, women didn't have other options," observes sociologist Kathleen Gerson. "Now they do." " (p. 103)

___________

House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest, by Craig Childs, is filled beautiful names (and places): Chaco Canyon, Hovenweep, Kinishba, Homol'ovi, Grasshopper Pueblo, Mesa Verde. It also has enough great feasts, rituals, "roads", awe-inspiring architecture, drought, migration, warfare, cannibalism, corn, prehistoric ecology and land management, and ground water to satisfy me (as well as a very good index). This would be a wonderful book to read before visiting late prehistoric sites in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico, which were familiar to me but I'm afraid not so well-known to most Americans. Childs does a very good job of explaining a lot of the things that southwestern archaeologists spend their time pondering with a minimum of jargon.

"The word roads is probably a misnomer. Although many are wide enough to handle multiple lanes of car traffic and they are outlined into the distance by curbs of rock and broken pottery, they seem too large for mere transportation. Instead they were likely formal processions, long public spaces akin to the National Mall in Washington, D.C." (p. 57)

___________

Quit It, by Marcia Byalick - another book about Tourette's Syndrome. Last month I reviewed I Can't Stop! by Holly L. Niner (aimed at younger kids) rather critically, and I was happy that Byalick's book avoided so many of the things that I found lacking in Niner's book. Some of this is undoubtedly because Quit It is aimed at older kids - the main character, Carrie, is starting 7th grade. Carrie's life is complicated, and TS is only one of her problems. Humorous, engaging, and not overly preachy, I think this is an excellent book for kids aged 11 and up.

"You could almost smell that the end of the school year was approaching. Maybe it was the brightness of the sunlight, or the fact there were no more awful multiple-choice tests, or simply that everyone except Clyde wore shorts to school." (p. 93)

___________

Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America, by Elliot Jaspin - a grab from the new release shelf, this is turning out to be a very compelling and heartbreaking collection of fine-grained histories of several different communities where African-Americans were driven out by vicious mobs. Most of the events covered took place in the early 1900's, but unlike the lynchings and race riots in this period, the (slightly) less deadly but very far-reaching "racial cleansing" that took place in many places (including Indiana, Missouri, Texas, and Kentucky) is not as commonly known.

"Within minutes the gunfire died away. The mob had used up all its ammunition. Uncertain of what to do next, the rioters fell back to Commercial Street. As the mob milled about, a few men trotted up Walnut Street to the state armory next door to the city jail and sized the rifles and ammunition - by one estimate a thousand rounds - that had been loaned to the posses the day before." (p. 75, on Pierce City, Missouri).

___________

Native Americans and Indians in Children's Literature

First all, I've got a review of Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell's 1961 Newbery Medal winner up here over at The Newbery Project. It's historic fiction for older kids, based on the story of an Indian woman who lived alone on one of the Channel Islands (off the coast of California) from 1835-1853. I'm still not a big fan of the book, thirty years after I read it for the first time.

A couple of my fellow Newbery Project bloggers posted their reviews of Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink (1963 winner), and Debbie Reese commented there and linked to her posts about the book at her blog, American Indians in Children's Literature, in two posts: Reflections on Caddie Woodlawn: Teaching about Stereotypes using Literature (which is especially poignant because it involves Reese's third grade daughter's response to the book), and The 'Scalp Belt" in Caddie Woodlawn.

Reese's blog (which includes book reviews from several other authors) is a wonderful resource for reading about children's books on different Native American peoples, First Nation groups, or American Indians, along with Oyate (which I linked to when writing about Nature books for Kids).

It's interesting how often Native peoples are invoked when writing about nature for kids. I know there are several academic papers out there linking American stereotypes about "Indians" as a whole with our ideas about nature. The idea of "people living in harmony with nature" is a powerful one that certainly transcends the notion that different Native peoples in different places and times had many different types of relationships with the environment (both natural, and that resulting from thousands of years of human modification) around them.

Anyway, I would venture to say that Karana in Island of the Blue Dolphins was mainly a convenient person to hang O'Dell's descriptions of Channel Island ecology upon.

Interestingly, this site (which ranks Newbery winners according to how well a bunch of librarians and teachers in Indiana liked them) says this about Island of the Blue Dolphins (56th out of 85):

An OK story, we had some questions about authenticity and character voice.

Although I violently disagreed with some of the comments from the Allen County Public Library librarians and teachers group (see my comments here), I did wonder about authenticity in Island of the Blue Dolphins, too. O'Dell seems to get the Native technology and the environmental surroundings of the island of San Nicholas right, but when it came to Karana's feelings - let alone her spiritual and cultural values - I really think there's a big hole in the book.

A Year Down Yonder

A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck was the most recent book that I read and reviewed for The Newbery Project. It was funny, it was touching, and it was filled with letter-perfect descriptions of the place I grew up. A little Googling reveals that Richard Peck actually grew up in Decatur, Illinois, and that "Grandma Dowdel's town" was partially based on Cerro Gordo, Illinois. But I'll bet that Richard Peck visited Utica sometime, given the burgoo and the "Souvenir of Starved Rock" pillow in the book.

I'm waiting to get A Long Way from Chicago from www.paperbackswap.com. These are books that I want my children to enjoy and have on their bookshelves for years.

I liked the introduction to these books on the publisher's site - I think that Peck wrote it:

Young readers who live in age-segregated suburbs need the wisdom, and the wit, of elders. After all, this is a young generation who no longer even have to write thank-you notes for gifts from grandparents. They rob themselves of their own histories and are once again at the mercy of each other.

But stories are better than that. They champion the individual, not the mass movement. They mix up the generations. They provide a continuity growing hard to come by. And laughter. Best of all, laughter.

I Can't Stop! Book Review

I Can't Stop! A Story about Tourette Syndrome, by Holly L. Niner, is a picture book about tics (and TS, obviously) for kids. The kids portrayed in the book are in elementary school, and I'd say the text is good for grades 2-5, and easily read to kids somewhat younger.

It describes what tics are, and shows how Nathan (the protagonist) deals with some common ones. It also relates how tics can be easily misdiagnosed as habits or allergies (as with a constant sniffing tic), and talks about how tics can only sometimes be temporarily suppressed, and how to talk to other people about them. All of this is good, and important, and the note to parents and teachers in the front of the book also includes clearly written, useful information and a link to the TSA (Tourette Syndrome Association). The illustrations by Meryl Treatner are engaging and interesting.

But I have some reservations about recommending this book to my 10 year old with TS, who also deals with OCD and ADHD. First all, Nathan only deals with tics - he is popular, does well in school, has no problems with social interactions (except for a few that crop up with some of the tics), and he is athletic and does well in several sports. His best friend is understanding and his parents and teacher find ways to help him. Everyone is supportive and matter-of-fact when dealing with Nathan's Tourette's Syndrome.

I would have welcomed a little more realism - maybe a grandparent who huffs "I don't believe in this stuff. In my day, we just stopped when we were told or got a spanking!". Maybe a teacher who gets annoyed, or a sibling that is embarrassed (like the wonderful protagonist in Rules, by Cynthia Lord).

Nathan seems to have a pretty perfect life, except for those tics, and this made him a bit bland. And I worry that my son will think that it's ok to have Tourette's, as long as everything else is really, really good. And it's true - as long as you don't have to hear yourself blink a certain number of times before you can finish a math problem, as long as you have a such a great and supportive best friend, and as long as you win soccer tournaments, having tics doesn't have to be such a big deal.

As with many disabilities, in the world of TS there seem to be some big divides between people with different degrees of severity, and/or different types of problems that are often associated with TS. This book would probably be fine - good even, if a bit pedestrian - for kids dealing with "TS only" (as Nathan does), but it's not great for TS Plus (TS+ includes OCD and ADHD, which many agree can be more challenging than tics). I guess I'm still waiting for a good kids' book on that. Maybe someone at Life's a Twitch! could write one?

While I'm at it, here's a useful post "minimizing confusion" about TS. If I were to write a children's book on Tourette's Syndrome, I would include this site (along with many of the others given above).

Tales from Silver Lands

If you want to read what all the smart kids were reading in 1925, check out my review of Tales from Silver Lands, by Charles J. Finger over at The Newbery Project.

It's got hummingbirds and huanacos and evil white toads (the "Silver Lands" are South America). And the origins of monkeys and armadillos are explained.

The Saline District Library had the original 1924 edition, with this interesting woodcut by Paul Honore on the cover:


If I'd seen the most recent cover, I don't think I would have checked it out of the library:

More Spring Flowers and Feminist Carnival

I think these flowers are from a box elder tree. I took this on Monday, when it was in the 70's and my kids were playing with their cousin at a playground in suburban Chicago (the former Grossdale, for those of you that know your Chicagoland history), and today it is snowing again, and the water in the hoses outside (which we just turned back on two weeks ago) is frozen solid.

At least I have the latest Carnival of Feminists to read, which has stories from Bollywood, 18th century Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, Poland, thirty centuries of Persian art, and the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. And a lot more on pop culture, politics, body image, etc.

More Signs of Spring (Despite Snow Today)

What are these little yellow flowers? They popped up in a scrap of woods near our house last week. From the car I thought they were crocuses, but when my daughter and I walked over there after Kindergarten, I saw that the leaves are all wrong for a crocus. They don't look like any of the yellow flowers in my wildflower book, so maybe they're a garden escape.


This was right next to the yellow flowers - a lovely skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus). My daughter and I both took a sniff but didn't smell anything yet.

Songs of the Gorilla Nation: Book Review

I have to thank Julie for these two blog posts (Medical Student's Syndrome, I Hope and Why I Blog), which led me to this wonderful book: Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey through Autism, by Dawn Prince-Hughes.

I'm interested in anthropology (though my specialty was archaeology, not biological anthropology or primates), and I'm interested in autism (partially because my son's Tourette's/OCD/ADHD shares so many similarities with Asperger's syndrome), so I was pretty certain I'd find Songs of the Gorilla Nation a fascinating read. I still think about some of the things I learned from reading Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation a couple of years ago.

But I was totally unprepared for the beautiful, lyrical writing and the heart-wrenching stories (of both the gorillas and of the author herself) in Songs of the Gorilla Nation. What a fitting title. Even the organization of the book - independent from its radiant prose - well, it just blew me away. Gorgeous. There are three parts, pulling all the stories together: A Life Without Song (Prince-Hughes' childhood, teen years, and early adulthood), The Songs of the Gorilla Nation (her years observing gorillas, what they taught her, about humans and herself), and How Can I Keep from Singing?, which is an unflinching look at biology, family, and advocacy and activism, and much more.

I learned a lot, and I loved reading this. What more can you say about a book, really? Go request that your library buy it, and then buy a copy to give to someone as a gift.

Opting, Rising, Moving, Mojo-ing

Well, I'm just happy that Linda Hirshman included links to MomsRising, the Mothers Movement Online, and MojoMom's blog in her latest diatribe: "A Tale of Two Workplaces".

Go on over to 11D and read "The National Scold" for some great commentary on Hirshman's latest, and then read "We Have Met the Enemy, and She Is Us" for a fascinating perspective on reporters and E.J. Graff's piece (see here or scroll back a few days for more on the "opt-out myth").

And "The Writing on the Wall" made my day. Plus, I love Judith Stadtman Tucker's closing: In solidarity. We don't use formal closings enough anymore. I use "Regards" in some e-mails, but I miss the variety I used to see in letters and books. Affectionately. Truly.

Yr. Obedient Servant, Sandy D.

Feminism Between X's and Boomers

The most recent Carnival of Feminists (are you reading it twice a month? It's like a free magazine, with every issue edited by someone new with a different perspective, with few if any adverstisements) also had an interesting post on generational differences amongst feminists: From Onlydom to Sisterhood....Interrupted, which led me to Jessica Valenti's insightful article on The Feminist Sorority.

Add today's mothers of young kids to feminism (if they have time - ironically, I think SAH mothers probably have more time to think about gender & politics), and you get a generation of women sandwiched between the Boomers and Generations X and Y (Xoomers? Gen Bx?), who are struggling with "work/life balance". We may have only recently pitched out the old 8-track tapes from the boxes in our basement, but we can download podcasts. We might listen to Prairie Home Companion, but we read Dan Savage's column too.

Anyway, this is another reason why I think that reading the comments about parenting and careers at MojoMom (Wake Up and Smell the Money and Dialogue with Linda Hirshman) and RebelDad and Linda Hirshman has been so interesting. this week - they highlight some of our assumptions about age, gender, and the worth of various kinds of work.

And if you like history, check out my post on Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman over The Newbery Project.

Myths, Research and Opinions about Opting Out

It's been a while since I've posted anything about the politics of motherhood, but there have been a lot of interesting articles on it recently, both in the mainstream press and in blogs.

E.J. Graff published a thoughtful article entitled The Opt-Out Myth in the Columbia Journalism Review, which brings important work by Joan C. Williams, Jessica Manvell, and Stephanie Bornstein of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California - 'Opt Out or Pushed Out? How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict - to a much greater audience.

There was immediate response to Graff's article from two different feminist perspectives: Linda Hirshman griped that elite women are betraying all women by not becoming feminist martyrs and sticking with their influential jobs (shame on you for even thinking of joining "the saccharine and retrograde tsunami of moral tales of sainted mommies"!), and journalist Leslie Morgan Steiner applauded Graff's work in her Washington Post column and blog: The Opt-Out Myth.

This morning I saw that Our Bodies, Our Blog (an excellent resource that I can't recommend highly enough) had a story on Graff's article - Media Myth-Making: The Moms-Go-Home Story and What It Means for Public Policy, including a link where E.J. Graff (who is affiliated with the Gender & Justice Project, at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University) includes a version of her Opt-Out article with footnotes and references. I found this almost as amazing and laudable as the original article itself. Wouldn't it be nice if more newspaper and magazine articles included this? And it is rather interesting that Linda Hirshman includes "Visiting Professor at Brandeis University" amongst her credentials. You have to wonder if Graff and Hirshman ever crossed paths on campus.

All of this was accompanied by a huge Mother Load of articles at The American Prospect (check out the web-only content there), and another fantastic Carnival of Feminists (the 34th!), at A Somewhat Old, But Capacious Handbag, which has one of my favorite blog titles of all time. Grabapple does a great riff on Graff's article in this Feminist Carnival, called The Birds and the Bees and the 401K.

It's hard to find time to blog when there's all of this to read and digest. But it is nonetheless encouraging, like our approaching spring (crocuses spotted!) and the upcoming elections.

The Dark Frigate

There's something to be said for reading children's literature. It's short, much of it is well done (I'm reading the Newbery winners, after all), it usually isn't too depressing, and it is something you can discuss and share with your children. Also, the other books I've read recently are rather intense and sometimes graphic (March, by Geraldine Brooks, and Until Our Hearts Are On the Ground, edited by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Jeannette Corbiere Lavell), and the Newbery books offer a nice balance.


Anyway, the latest YA book I read and wrote about over at The Newbery Project is The Dark Frigate, by Charles Boardman Hawes, which won the prize in 1924. If you like Patrick O'Brian (yeah Julie@Bookworm and Sloth, I'm talking about you), there's more than a good chance you'll like this one. And it's got pirates!